2018-19 Upper Deck Engrained Hockey Cards

Very expensive. Cards I got from 2 boxes have very little resale value ($50 -$100) In both boxes at least one card was damaged. Way better idea to buy the cards you want from ebay.

Glorified sp-gameused product $265 per pack and your lucky if you get $50-$100. Value

I agree with Fultoncards 100%. Nicely written and you nail it squarely on the head. This is a hobby and the money spent should only be from disposable income and not money one would use for investing.
People who buy a few boxes and then become annoyed because they did not hit a rare card are foolish. If we all hit big then the “big hit” would be devalued. If one does not pull a rare card, do not blame the company or anyone else. Blame yourself in believing you have a right to such cards just because you bought a few boxes.
The card card companies charge what ever they charge because it is their right to do so. It is also your right to abstain from buying any product if you believe that the cost is too much. It is not anyone’s right to get hissy and slander people or a company’s product just because you did not get what you want. The retail market is not an investment market. When you buy a new car, that car depreciates as soon as you drive it off the car lot. Same as with appliances, electronics etc. Did you buy these products as investments? No. So why would you buy trading cards as such?
The idea of buying a box of trading cards is the anticipation of getting a card of a favourite player or collecting certain cards and putting them into a personal collection for your own enjoyment. People do this with postage stamps, artwork, china plates etc.
Fultoncards is right on the money with his statement. Well said.

Just watched three case breaks online. Cards look amazing but for the price not much there. Lots and lots of lower tier rookie autos. If you had to call out a case hit one of the cases was a Bobby Orr auto and the other would have been Martin Brodeur. Great players but case hit? The other case, I am not sure what the case hit would have been? Might be a good gamble / buy if boxes / pack was $145. USD but at $235 way, way too high a price for the value you receive in my opinion.

The issue with a product priced at $250 is that it can easily halve over time, if it does not include a generational talent rookie crop. Let’s be clear here. What is a 1/1 on a 14-card checklist? It is a tactic so that people who gamble rather than crunch math chase 14 cards over the entire population of boxes in existence.

And what if you land a 1/1? Does anyone else covet that card, if most people are priced out of the product? And why would they covet that card and that brand – of that year – when new brands and 1/1 cards can be printed in perpetuity for the rest of the player’s career, post-retirement, and death? And does a $500 card with quite literally 0% odds to hit it justify a 100% chance at a $250 sticker price?

I appreciate people with deeper pockets will buy high-end products, and a few may possess on occasional mint generational card worth over $5,000. I embrace the hobby, and all those who share it, of any and every socio-economic class. But mathematically (see WarkIt’s post), collectors will possess $50 of cards upon box break, if that.

On average, cards do *not* increase in value over time, other than an exceptionally narrow subset of rookies who go on to be all-time leaders in our game. Even then, initial social media hype will hyperinflate card value prematurely, which still devalues over time as the new crop of rookies – and collectors – replace the last. Newer technology emerges.

The cards themselves are handsome. I dig it. It is simply healthy to question why a box of cards with 0% at a 1/1 piece of stick is being priced higher than an authenticated 1/1 *entire* legend’s stick. For this reason, let’s remain savvy and critical, not cynical, and accept that a $250 box of cards is never an investment. Real estate is. It’s an expense, or divestiture of one’s entertainment budget. So, we had better embrace what we do receive. Or, we should simply target the cards on the secondary market, at an appropriate price point. The shrewder we are, the more commensurate the sticker prices by UD. (Personally I think we should be spending this kind of money on a son/daughter’s equipment, not cards.)

Peter- SP Authentic isn’t as bad as some of the other products UD produced. Though of course since the McDavid year UD has gotten away with the less for more approach, stupid overpriced 1-2 year new products (ex. Synergy, probably there worst product to date) and we continue to allow it to happen, mostly because of the popularity of breaks. It is a shame because SP was my favourite, unfortunately UD is a greedy company who only cares about there twitter image of a small kid showing there hit.

Unless you hit big on this products, and as warkit has pointed out via the math, you’re going to lose money breaking this product. It will be interesting to see if the rookie mem pieces are event used or game used. Knowing UD it was event used. Still can’t believe the Cup is event used for rookies.

Warkit, kudos to you for doing the math. Products like these are made specifically for breakers. The hits are for the most part mediocre with maybe 1-2 big ones every master case. UD no longer make hockey products for collectors sadly. I just look at what they did to SP Authentic and can only walk away from collecting hockey cards.

Warkit, thanks for the math. At those odds you would only have to spend $280,000 to pull one of the 14 cards. More than likely you are also correct that most packs will yield less than a $50.00 return. At least with this being a new product, Upper Deck want stink it up with previous years autos as hits when you are buying this years product.

No autos or mem from Mitch Marner.
This product fails.

According to Upper Deck, the impressive Dual Stick Nameplates (1/1) cards are “perhaps the finest NHL-licensed memorabilia cards ever made.”

now that the list is out — just 14 cards in this set.
product run – 350 base cards X 100 cards = 35000 / 2 per pack – so approx 17500 packs.

1250 packs for every one of these cards —
my UD-dee senses tell me that those cards will be in very specific cases going to specific breakers or buyers…

so for the rest of us $200+ for approx $30-40 in cards for each of the 1-2 packs you can squeeze onto your already overlimit credit card.